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Google is being prosecuted in Europe and the United States for illegal tracking

Google | Dec 3, 2018 | Master3395

Call for urgent action against the giant.

Several news media write that Google is facing potential litigation in both Europe and the United States for having illegally tracked phones without the consent of the owners.

Mapping location dataIn Europe, the company is accused of violating the privacy claim and the company faces a potential fine of four percent of their annual income if they are convicted.

The reason behind the criminal prosecution is that Google has mapped location data to users even after manually turning off location history. The Netherlands and Poland are among seven European countries, which are encouraged by consumer authorities to prosecute Google.

Difficult for Android usersAmong other things, they say that Google has used different methods to encourage users to enable location history and browsing activity while pointing out that such practices mislead consumers when it comes to using their personal data. According to BEUC, the practice is not governed by the GDPR legislation since Google has no valid reasons for possessing such data about users.

Until now, there have been different practices on iOS and Android, where iOS users cannot be traced unless they grant the application permission. This is a little harder for Android users since the software is controlled by Google itself.

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